About
Venerable Walpola Piyananda is a Theravada monk who has been ordained since age 12 in Sri Lanka. He founded Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Vihara in Los Angeles in 1976 and serves as abbot. He holds M.A. degrees and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and UCLA. Piyananda is adviser to the president of Sri Lanka on international religious affairs and chief monk of the Sri Lankan Sangha in America and Canada. He was instrumental in re-establishing the Theravada bhikkhuni order, serving as preceptor at the first full ordination of women in 1996 in Sarnath, India, after the lineage had ceased in 1017. He has ordained numerous women as fully ordained nuns. Piyananda served as Buddhist chaplain for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games and has provided services to Southeast Asian refugees. He is author of three books on Buddhism.
Teaching focus
Bhante Piyananda's core teaching draws on mindfulness of breathing, noting practice, body sweeping. The frame is early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon, but the language stays plain. Bhante Piyananda doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include sila, samadhi, and the four foundations of mindfulness. None of those get presented as abstract ideas. They're worked into the body, into ethics, into how a practitioner shows up in family life or at work, so that the dharma stops feeling like a separate compartment. There's a steady invitation in the talks to keep practice human-sized. Sit when you can, return when you've drifted, and trust that small consistent attention does more over the years than dramatic breakthroughs. Format-wise, Bhante Piyananda teaches in in-person, and the tone moves easily between guided sittings, dharma talks, and Q&A. Questions tend to get answered the way they were asked, without being reframed into something cleaner. That alone tells you a lot about how the room feels.
Background
Venerable Walpola Piyananda is a Theravada monk who has been ordained since age 12 in Sri Lanka. He founded Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Vihara in Los Angeles in 1976 and serves as abbot. He holds M.A. degrees and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and UCLA. Piyananda is adviser to the president of Sri Lanka on international religious affairs and chief monk of the Sri Lankan Sangha in America and Canada. He was instrumental in re-establishing the Theravada bhikkhuni order, serving as preceptor at the first full ordination of women in 1996 in Sarnath, India, after the lineage had ceased in 1017. He has ordained numerous women as fully ordained nuns. Piyananda served as Buddhist chaplain for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games and has provided services to Southeast Asian refugees. He is author of three books on Buddhism. Venerable Walpola Piyananda (“Bhante”) is the founder, president, and abbot of Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Vihara in Los Angeles, California. Born in 1943 in Sri Lanka, he has been a monk since the age of 12. He came to the United States in 1976 to further his education, attending Northwestern University and UCLA, holding two M.A.s and a Ph.D. He is presently the adviser to the president of Sri Lanka on international religious affairs and the chief monk of the Sri Lankan Sangha in America and Canada. He has provided many services for Southeast Asian refugees in Los Angeles and was the Buddhist chaplain for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. He currently teaches Dharma and meditation at his temple in Los Angeles, one of the oldest Theravada temples in the United States. Bhante Piyananda has been instrumental in the re-establishment of the Theravada bhikkhuni Order. He was there with the planning and work as a Preceptor in 1996 in Sarnath, India when the first group of women became fully ordained nuns (since the Theravadan Order had previously died out in the year 1017). Since that time he has ordained many more women as fully ordained bhikkhunis. He is author of The Bodhi Tree Grows in L.A., Saffron Days in L.A., and Thus We Heard: Recollections of the Life of the Buddha. Bhante Piyananda teaches across several communities, including Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. That work sits within early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon, and the recurring concerns of Bhante Piyananda's teaching, ethical foundation, steady attention, and the slow softening of habitual reactivity, echo the older texts without sounding distant from a 21st-century practitioner's life. What stands out across Bhante Piyananda's talks isn't a single technique but a steadying tone. Practice is treated as something built slowly, in ordinary life, with care. There's room for the difficulties practitioners actually bring into the room, grief, restlessness, the body's complaints, family obligations, and the encouragement is consistent without being pushy.
Lineage
Bhante Piyananda teaches within early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Bhante Piyananda talks about practice, with steady reference to the older Buddhist vocabulary while keeping the door open for people who've never read a sutra. Whether that framing lands as monastic or lay depends on the specific talk, but the consistent thread is care for the form without letting the form become the point.
What to expect
Sitting with Bhante Piyananda, you can expect grounded instruction in mindfulness of breathing, with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. The teaching voice is steady. Bhante Piyananda won't push you past your edge, and there's a clear preference for slow, sustainable practice over breakthrough chasing. Bring a notebook if you like, or don't. Either way, you'll be met where you are.
